Review: 'Wolf Kill,' by Cary J. Griffith

By Cary J. Griffith. (Adventure Publications, 384 pages, $16.95.)

Forget beach reads this hot and sweaty summer. How about a taut mystery set in far northern Minnesota's punishing winter to cool you off?

The latest from accomplished Minnesota author Cary J. Griffith brings us a new North Woods hero to join the ranks of William Kent Krueger's Cork O'Connell and Allen Eskens' Max Rupert. He even gives Brian Freeman's Minnesota-to-the-core Jonathan Stride a run for the money.

Sam Rivers had a tortured childhood. He hated his brutal father and left the family farm at 17, leaving behind his doting mother and a few personal treasures. Not one to look back, he established himself as a valued agent with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, where he became a self-taught wolf expert.

The death of his father in a hunting accident brings him back to town 20 years later, where a sudden mystery involving cattle being slaughtered by wolves in unprecedented circumstances gets him entangled in a scheme he never saw coming.

Sam retrieves a certified copy of the old man's will from his hidden cache, a document leaving everything to Sam, in suspicious contrast with the one bequeathing his considerable assets and life insurance to his hunting buddies.

"Wolf Kill" is an addictive tale of lust and greed, conspiracy and fraud, and, eventually murder, and one man's battle to disprove a dangerous accusation against wolves, a species that Sam has grown to know and admire.

If the plodding expedition on snowshoes through a blizzard in the Minnesota wilds is slow going, the plot moves a mile a minute. And it's easy to think that Sam Rivers will stick around for a few more stories.

Cary J. Griffith will sign books with author Mary Logue at 1 p.m. Aug. 26 at the Lake Superior Trading Post, and at 6 p.m. Aug. 28 at Drury Lake Books, both in Grand Marais, Minn.